Approaches to Teaching Austen's EmmaEditor(s): Marcia McClintock Folsom
Pages: xliii & 200 pp.
Published: 2004
ISBN: 9780873529136 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873529129 (hardcover)
"Any instructor about to take the plunge and teach this complex novel will find most of what he or she needs for preparation in this strong collection of essays."

Deborah Kaplan, George Mason University

"This volume, by showing different, even conflicting ways of understanding Emma, will push teachers and students of the novel to question their own interpretations in productive ways, heightening their appreciation of Austen’s literary art."

JASNA News

Critics of Austen's Emma have remarked on both its pleasures and its difficulties. Teachers seeking to introduce Austen's intricate, subtly crafted world to new readers often find that students are put off by the novel's seeming lack of action and preoccupation with the details of daily life. This volume in the MLA's Approaches to Teaching series outlines the specific challenges of teaching Emma and shows teachers how to construct lectures, initiate classroom discussions, and devise writing assignments that illuminate for first-time readers the novel's many layers of meaning, its hospitality to different interpretations, and the sheer delights of reading and rereading the book.

Table of Contents

Approaches to Teaching Austen's Emma

Preface to the Volume

Introduction: The Challenges of Teaching Emma

PART 1: MATERIALS Marcia McClintock Folsom

Editions

Criticism

Books of Particular Use to Teachers

The Emma Films

Teaching about Emma's Chronology

One Idea for Initiating Class Discussion: "Opinions of Emma"

PART 2: APPROACHES

Social and Political Contexts

The Everyday of EmmaJulia Prewitt Brown

Jane Austen, Slavery, and British ImperialismRuth Perry

The Experience of Class, Emma, and the American College StudentLaura Mooneyham White